AbleGamers discusses its new guidelines as best practice for the industry.

There are plenty of reasons why people don't play certain video games. Some might find them too hard. Others simply find them too boring, or just not fun. But for millions of disabled people, playing games isn't a matter of wanting to, but being able to.

Stephanie Walker encountered this problem first-hand one Friday evening in 2004, when she found herself unable to log in for a regular gaming session with a long-time gaming partner, Mark Barlet. The multiple sclerosis that Walker had contracted in 2001 had finally cost her the use of her right hand, making mouse-and-keyboard gaming a physical impossibility. "I freaked out that this disability was going to take away something that we loved, so we started looking for resources," Barlet recalled in an interview with Ars Technica. "We did not find anything, so she and I took it on ourselves to create it."

Since then, the non-profit AbleGamers Foundation that Barlet and Walker set up has helped educate the public and the game industry about issues related to disabled gamers. The group has spread its message by attending conferences, hosting "accessibility arcades" where disabled gamers can try out games designed for them, and reviewing games specifically for their accessibility levels. But the recently published Includification: A Practical Guide to Game Accessibility might represent the group's most comprehensive and impactful tool in its continuing efforts to help the industry provide better support for the disabled community.

Barlet, who serves as AbleGamers' president, says that a few simple design tweaks—subtitles, colorblind options, and re-mappable keys—are enough to capture "a large segment of the [disabled] market." Those features aren't enough to provide universal accessibility, though. The Includification guidelines, which took a full year to compile, include design practices aimed at gamers with four major types of disabilities: mobility, hearing, vision, and cognitive impairment. For each category, the guidelines range from an easy-to-implement Level 1 baseline (the ability to change font sizes for those with impaired vision, for instance) to Level 3 best practices (having the game read on-screen text out loud to blind gamers). The document also includes special guidelines for mobile games and plenty of concrete examples of how certain games have solved accessibility problems, alongside testimonials from developers and industry veterans.

Even without these specific guidelines in hand, Barlet said the industry has generally been very receptive to AbleGamers' education efforts, and enthusiastic to try to implement the kinds of changes they've been advocating. "The question [has] shifted from 'why they should do it,' to 'how do we do it,'" Barlet said. "We're hoping that this document serves as a reference guide for all developers and publishers to look to while designing the games instead of us catching them, often after the fact, at the limited number of conferences we can attend or board meetings we can make."

Why disabled gamers get left out

Barlet specifically cited EA and Popcap as publishers that have done a good job of including accessibility standards in their games. While Barlet didn't want to call out any of the worst-performing companies in our interview, games like Bethesda's Skyrim, Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption, and Ubisoft's Farcry 2 were among the lowest-rated games in their website's accessibility reviews section (though EA's Battlefield 3also scored very low, showing that even the best publishers still have gaps in their accessibility record).

When games like these end up neglecting disabled gamers, AbleGamers' editor-in-chief Steve Spohn says the reason usually isn't malice but simply ignorance or obliviousness. He tells the story of a meeting he had with a Blizzard developer where he suggested, among other things, that the developer add a colorblind mode with some sort of marker to differentiate items of different colors. "You know, I’m colorblind and I never thought of that," Spohn recalls the developer saying.

"It was at that point that [Barlet] and I realized how strange the development world really is," Spohn told Ars. "We have developers who need these accessibility options and they don’t even think about them because they’re so used to dealing with everyday situations. It's just the norm to them. But we need to get developers advocating for their own disabilities as well as everyone else’s."

Other times, support for disabled gamers gets left out of games because of financial concerns. Faced with tight deadlines and shoestring budgets, Barlet said, even well-meaning developers can end up pushing accessibility options off the back of their "to-do" lists, in favor of putting development resources out there. "We need to let developers know accessibility options are important for their bottom line," Barlet said. "Here you have a market of gamers saying, 'We will give you our money if you just add options that let us play.' Publishers need to realize more than 33 million gamers are potentially left on the table every time they cut accessibility options for the sake of meeting the deadline."

Even when awareness and money aren't concerns, though, Spohn and Barlet say that some developers are resistant to their efforts out of a sense of "fair play." Many of AbleGamers' accessibility guidelines focus on including options that make the game easier to play for players that have motor-skill or cognitive impairments. This includes features like aim and steering assist, relaxed timing requirements, one-button control, hints for difficult puzzles, or even an "auto-pass" system that lets players skip difficult sections entirely (a feature Nintendo helped legitimize starting with New Super Mario Bros. Wii's "Super Guide").

"Quite frankly we still receive a fair amount of pushback from developers concerning fears [that] implementing these options will somehow ruin their game," Spohn said. But he was adamant that making a game accessible for disabled gamers doesn't have to mean making it too easy or dumbing it down for others. "If the concern is getting achievements in modes that allow easier play, turn off the achievements or scale them down. If the concern is giving out rewards, scale them down. If the concern is that other gamers who do not need the accessibility options will use them to complete the game, make sure to reward players on a sliding scale that benefits players for going through the most difficult version of the game possible."

Hopefully, AbleGamers' new guidelines will help developers get over the issues that prevent their games from being playable by everyone, regardless of their physical or mental abilities.

Promoted Comments

2) The idea of options to skip hard parts... ehhh... no. Sorry. Game developers are already destroying franchise after franchise by making games 'more available' to different people. Ubi is the king of doing this. I understand the reasoning behind it but we are already suffering games turning into 'run and gun' clones.

Why is it always assumed that if there's an option that makes a game easier, this somehow "ruins it" because everyone will use it? I remember the big hubbub about the Vita Chambers in BioShock, for example. I used the thing ONCE because there was a Big Daddy that needed like one more shell to the face before it died, and I just wanted to get past that section. The rest of the time though, if I died, I reloaded my most recent save. That might be setting me back 15 minutes or something, but I did it anyway because I felt the Vita Chambers were making the game too easy. No one was FORCED to use them though, and I'm sure many players that were perhaps not as good at the game (or perhaps even disabled) used them to get through difficult sections.

Point is, having an option for those who lack the skill or capability to beat a section to bypass it somehow does NOT mean that it has to be the default mode for every player. As the end of the article even mentions, the devs have the power to change rewards, disable achievements, lessen achievements (ie- Only the chapter complete ones are available, not any of the others) and other methods will provide disincentives to keep players from using these options unless they need to.

Ultimately, it's about expanding choices and accessibility, not turning every game into some mindless task that requires the barest of interactions.

57 Reader Comments

The elephant in the room is the ever increasing emphasis on motion controls and gesture controls. As a physically disabled gamer myself, this shift into a more 'natural' interface (natural for whom?) worries me. Gaming is one of the few activities I can engage in where I'm more or less on par with other people. Yet, all I see is an effort to leave people like me behind as technology progresses.

It's maddening, as despite the tech itself being used for adaptive uses - the Kinect is being used for some truly inspiring things - it will likely never be used in that way for games due to essentially no ROI for the developers.

Awesome article. While I myself am not disabled, I've really begun to notice how few options there are for those who aren't as lucky as I am. Even something as simple as subtitles (which are useful to non-disabled gamers as well) have only recently become relatively ubiquitous even though they, as your comparison shows, still have some work to do on making them better. I would love to see the industry implement some of these techniques, and perhaps having such a well researched and put together guide will help them to do so.

1) Most of these options should be in the game. Period. Some of them (being able to rebind ALL KEYS) have been around from day one and recently have been removed from games. If it takes a bigger reason than 'this crap should be here by default' like 'put this crap back in for disabled people' it is fine by me.

I will also add I do not consider myself disabled but one of the first options I go to now is to turn the subtitles on in games. Or at least adjust the vocal volume (if the game even has it) so its higher than all the others.

2) The idea of options to skip hard parts... ehhh... no. Sorry. Game developers are already destroying franchise after franchise by making games 'more available' to different people. Ubi is the king of doing this. I understand the reasoning behind it but we are already suffering games turning into 'run and gun' clones.

"The question [has] shifted from 'why they should do it,' to 'how do we do it,'"

That phrase is a curiosity to me. To the people who have a love for the games they make and want others to enjoy them, I can't see them being of the mindset 'Why should I do it'. So it makes me wonder, who were they talking to that gave them so much resistance.

2) The idea of options to skip hard parts... ehhh... no. Sorry. Game developers are already destroying franchise after franchise by making games 'more available' to different people. Ubi is the king of doing this. I understand the reasoning behind it but we are already suffering games turning into 'run and gun' clones.

Why is it always assumed that if there's an option that makes a game easier, this somehow "ruins it" because everyone will use it? I remember the big hubbub about the Vita Chambers in BioShock, for example. I used the thing ONCE because there was a Big Daddy that needed like one more shell to the face before it died, and I just wanted to get past that section. The rest of the time though, if I died, I reloaded my most recent save. That might be setting me back 15 minutes or something, but I did it anyway because I felt the Vita Chambers were making the game too easy. No one was FORCED to use them though, and I'm sure many players that were perhaps not as good at the game (or perhaps even disabled) used them to get through difficult sections.

Point is, having an option for those who lack the skill or capability to beat a section to bypass it somehow does NOT mean that it has to be the default mode for every player. As the end of the article even mentions, the devs have the power to change rewards, disable achievements, lessen achievements (ie- Only the chapter complete ones are available, not any of the others) and other methods will provide disincentives to keep players from using these options unless they need to.

Ultimately, it's about expanding choices and accessibility, not turning every game into some mindless task that requires the barest of interactions.

2) The idea of options to skip hard parts... ehhh... no. Sorry. Game developers are already destroying franchise after franchise by making games 'more available' to different people. Ubi is the king of doing this. I understand the reasoning behind it but we are already suffering games turning into 'run and gun' clones.

I agree with this to be honest. Games are simply easy-mode now and Super Mario Bro's is a great example. It used to be a tough franchise as a number of games in that genre were known for. With the Wii version you can just skip the entire meat of the game to watch the amazing credits. Accessibility is one thing, but that just undermines the challenge of the concept (granted it was optional...but always there).

It's a question of economics. Sure you have 33 million disabled, potential customers, but they aren't a homogenous mass. For one, 33 million sounds like they're counting every disabled person in the US, with major and minor disabilities. How many are gamers? (I.e. not just people who will play Angry Birds once in a while, but actually buy games even once or twice a year). Surely 20% is setting it high. But ok. 6,6 million actual gamers.

Maybe your game only appeals to 10% of those gamers. Now we're down to 660.000 potential customers. Not everyone is going to buy the game - there are lots of games that appeal to me, but I can't buy them all. So maybe 20% will buy the game. That's 130.000 customers left But of those, any given feature may only help 10%, since the rest have a completely different issue. So now we're down to 13.000 potential customers.That's not a lot of people, and it's a generous estimate.

Some features are low-hanging fruit. Closed captioning takes little effort, and wouldn't break gameplay significantly in almost any case.

Other things might require many hours of developement and testing, and lead to lots of issues down the road. How does it handle in MP games, does it break other features, now there's another feature that might need patching down the road. Do we delay the game so we can get the disabled-friendly version out simultaneously, or do we release two version? Will stores stock two versions? (Not so much a problem for digital downloads, so there's one more reason that can't come soon enough).

I'm not saying screw disabled people, I'm just saying I can easily see why game-companies aren't jumping at those "33 million customers" they're leaving on the table. They're adding a lot of cost, and there's no guarantee they'll see any payoff. They could price disabled-friendly games higher, but that wouldn't look very good in PR, and it would futher shrink the customer-base (since some might decide they could do with the normal version for less $$$).

I think better bets are the companies that develop special controllers that work well for disabled people Ideally, those can work with almost all games, and at least for PC games, it might be possible to write custom drivers, further expanding the possibilities. I know there are custom developed gamepads for people with reduced dexterity.Expecting game developers to invest significant amounts of time outside the aforementioned lowhanging fruit like CC, is probably optimistic.

I read thru all the documentation and information they have posted on their site and read a few interviews and as an indie/hobby game developer i welcome the challenges of incorporating these features. There's a lot more to it then just the ability to re-map buttons and closed caption. They listed things that I would probably never have thought of and feel a bit bad because the last thing i would ever want to hear is someone wanted to play my game and couldn't because i didn't think to code it. To me its a win win add in a few extra things in the settings and it will equal increase in sales because i guarantee people that need those extra features to be able to play a game will tell others that they were able to.

Edit: Once a developer figures out how to incorporate a lot of these features that code could be reused to update older titles and for future titles.

I can already see from the comments that the gaming community is having a similar reaction as the sporting community did about Oscar Pistorius competing in the Summer Olympics (on his carbon-fibre legs). One can hope that people won't start putting an asterisk against the scores/names of those gamers who must utilize these accessibility features in order to compensate for physical or mental limitations.

Remember, these are all just games.

People who want a challenge that is not "destroying the franchise" are welcome to join the first-person shooter action in Afghanistan, where our troops have no "easy-mode."

Why is it always assumed that if there's an option that makes a game easier, this somehow "ruins it" because everyone will use it?

<snip single-player game stuff>

What about multiplayer? The article mentioned aim-assist, turn-assists, etc. These things usually result in bans for hacking.

Sure, you can have unassisted servers or instances, but then people would complain about those being unavailable.

The point is that this not a simple issue, and broad changes just won't hack it.

As someone that's on the moderate-to-what-color-is-that end of colorblindness, I loved the colorblind option in WoW (I had a hell of a time telling blues from purples, and often ended up looking them up online, and once notoriously connected an orange wire to a brown one at work). However, the equitable strategies in my current game of choice (Mechwarrior Online) would be limited; they could use different symbols for hostile/friendly, easily, but if they added an aim-assist option I would be really pissed.

Why is it always assumed that if there's an option that makes a game easier, this somehow "ruins it" because everyone will use it? I remember the big hubbub about the Vita Chambers in BioShock, for example. I used the thing ONCE because there was a Big Daddy that needed like one more shell to the face before it died, and I just wanted to get past that section. The rest of the time though, if I died, I reloaded my most recent save. That might be setting me back 15 minutes or something, but I did it anyway because I felt the Vita Chambers were making the game too easy. No one was FORCED to use them though, and I'm sure many players that were perhaps not as good at the game (or perhaps even disabled) used them to get through difficult sections.

My observation as someone who grew up with an Atari 2600 is that the playability of games is not as valued as it once was. So long as the writers know that these tools are available (I'm thinking more of the Vita chamber above than the accessibility features in the article) it will influence how they lay out and play test the game. Old-style arcade games where you only get as far as your three lives could get you certainly had drama but also had to be well balanced - difficult enough to be interesting and worth pumping more quarters into but not so hard as to make it impossible to actually play.

Why is it always assumed that if there's an option that makes a game easier, this somehow "ruins it" because everyone will use it?

<snip single-player game stuff>

What about multiplayer? The article mentioned aim-assist, turn-assists, etc. These things usually result in bans for hacking.

Why would there be bans for hacking if those options are baked into the game?

Quote:

Sure, you can have unassisted servers or instances, but then people would complain about those being unavailable.

Why would they be unavailable? Wouldn't there be more unassisted servers/instances than not, just by demographics?

Quote:

The point is that this not a simple issue, and broad changes just won't hack it.

No, but they're a place to start.

Quote:

As someone that's on the moderate-to-what-color-is-that end of colorblindness, I loved the colorblind option in WoW (I had a hell of a time telling blues from purples, and often ended up looking them up online, and once notoriously connected an orange wire to a brown one at work). However, the equitable strategies in my current game of choice (Mechwarrior Online) would be limited; they could use different symbols for hostile/friendly, easily, but if they added an aim-assist option I would be really pissed.

Why? Why are you assuming you'd play a match against those who have the option turned on? Why can't there be something to offset the hypothetical aim-assist option (more xp/points per kill, less penalty per death)?

Edit: Once a developer figures out how to incorporate a lot of these features that code could be reused to update older titles and for future titles.

This is very true. People in general hate re-inventing the wheel, especially when its main function is wasting time. Simple initial decisions that are part of planning while trivial initially can be the difference between 20 lines of code to add a colorblind option or rewriting 20 functions plus testing.

Aim-assist is a major thing for shooters. There's a reason why I don't play competitive fps shooters, and a lot of it has to do with quick-scoping and headshot "sweeping" and other tweaks made to remove some of the human element of precise aiming. These games that use these tricks feel different and their speed and pace are completely different. Adding this to the code of the game changes the games design.

The closest thing in my own life that I can relate to is my own age. Kids can aim faster and react faster than me as I age, and having to change my playstyle to keep up with these speed demons can be frustrating, but I'd rather be at the disadvantage without any aim-assist and have to adjust my playstyle or weapons.

I understand that it's not the same thing at all, but I just don't want aim-assist garbage in my games that don't have it. I'm sorry, but those games are not fun to me.

Expecting game developers to invest significant amounts of time outside the aforementioned lowhanging fruit like CC, is probably optimistic.

L.

I agree completely with your viewpoint. But let's play a game.

Let's change disabled to Black, or Hispanic.

Now those companies are racist scumbags right?

Political correctness is stupid, but I think my point is very valid.

Those companies have a right to present their products anyway they choose, its their creation. The guy 10-15 years ago who made a bunch of art and paintings of people doing less than desirable things (urinating in another persons mouth) was also art. I don't agree with it, but I support the rights of that artist to express himself and his freedom of thought, no matter how heinous it might be.

The sad part about it is, that traditionally speaking, the article is correct, disabled gamers have been left out in the cold. If you did the same thing with other groups of disadvantaged individuals, you'd have Al Sharpton up your ass with a pair of pliers and a magnifying glass.

For most games alot of the options are going to be a non-issue, the only subset that really impacts anyone is in competitive play. I can see how some people will be of the position that 'it's a game, just let it go' when it comes to options that could be abused but are helpful to some people. I also understand how important it is for the enjoyment of games (especially competitive) that the game feels fair. So it's going to be a balancing act for a developer if they attempt such things, which is generally going to be easier to disable some options in competitive multiplayer since gameplay balance is a difficult enough problem for most developers.

However, the equitable strategies in my current game of choice (Mechwarrior Online) would be limited; they could use different symbols for hostile/friendly, easily, but if they added an aim-assist option I would be really pissed.

There should be a default assist against Jenners!

Sometimes it does seem odd when it becomes so much harder to hit the fast mechs when Battletech didn't make it seem that much harder but I agree, aim-assist to me isn't terribly fun. I think "accessibility" features are great, but some games simply don't feel right if you just jam them in, specially with competitive games. Of course if we all have assist then we're still on even footing and you could tweak rewards for using versus not using it but to make it worth not using you would have to have a big enough difference in reward and manage to not completely shut out the people that need it as far as reward goes. NOT SIMPLE.

Well, the thing that is still - to me - as a disabled gamer (lack of right forearm, basically) the worst move ever is a lack of customization for the controls. This is sort of bad in Skyrim, but manageable. What's really confusing in skyrim is that assigning a weapon to your left hand means you click the left mouse-button to use it. Straightforward, yes? Unless of course you have mousebuttons switched in windows. Then you have to click M1 (i.e. the right physical button) to use a left-handed weapon... Ugh.

Worse are games that are console ports without any customization at all, just different layouts. Worst offender I recall in that category would be Mirror's Edge. Gameplay looked nice enough, bought it from Steam...but it is simply unplayable for me, physically.

As long as there are still companies making games who get these basics wrong, I think we're looking at a few years until we see widespread awareness for the kinds of problems colorblind gamers face (just to mention one example).

Really, how much code does it take to make a couple of color reassignment options? This is especially important in games where friend/foe is marked by colors.One of the worst offenders ever was the Falcon flight sim series. I loved those games, but I dreaded ground-support missions. Good guys were green, bad guys were brown. I just cancelled out of those missions, because there was exactly 50% chance that I would end up court-martialed for blowing up my own armor column.

I think it's also important to note that Includification is not intended to bludgeon developers into complying with some utopian vision of accessible gaming. Instead, it's a guide to explain to developers the major hurdles games present to people with a variety of disabilities, and simple ways to remedy them. The key point is that these suggestions are not intended to be implemented at the cost of the overall game experience itself. It's up to the developer to decide which parts of Includification make sense for their game.

In short, Includification is about increasing the options of disabled end users, but not at the expense of the creative vision of developers.

Uh, no? It's not racist or discriminatory to not specifically include support for a group of customers. It would be discriminatory if they refused to sell to disabled or hispanics, but they aren't.

I can see game companies implementing some of the features that are relatively low-impact, like options for color-blind and people with bad hearing, but other things are far harder to implement, and will impact gameplay a lot more.It's certainly a good thing they're paying more attention to this customerbase, but I just don't see a large investment being made, especially given it's already hard to make a profit on games that aren't AAA-titles. I wouldn't mind being surprised, as long as it doesn't degrade the general quality of games.

Really, how much code does it take to make a couple of color reassignment options? This is especially important in games where friend/foe is marked by colors.One of the worst offenders ever was the Falcon flight sim series. I loved those games, but I dreaded ground-support missions. Good guys were green, bad guys were brown. I just cancelled out of those missions, because there was exactly 50% chance that I would end up court-martialed for blowing up my own armor column.

It's not even as difficult as creating color reassignment options. Just don't design things to be solely dependent on color for differentiation.

As a deaf gamer myself, I require captions and subtitles to really game, since the storyline often contains critical details to continue. Long time ago, Valve originally did a terrible job with Half Life 1 but did a stunning, amazing turnaround and put the industry's best closed captioning into Half Life 2. Valve's latest games have been the benchmark, in the best captioning and visual feedback support ever provided in a game, even supporting directional red-flashes, to tell me which side of my body got hurt. Kudos to Valve for their stunning turn-around.

iD software was originally not very accessible for a long time, they did not release Doom 3 with captions, but I was very happy that a third-party caption add-on pack was released, called Doom3[CC] at http://gamescc.rbkdesign.com/ ... I finally finished Doom3, many years after Doom3 was released.

Today, I've played all Half Life 2 games, but I have never played Half Life 1 because there was no captioned version. Finally, after 8 years, a third party TC called Black Mesa Source got released at http://release.blackmesasource.com/ and it has English subtitles! This is now the next game I plan to play, and I can finally finish part of Half Life 1 (at least in a derived format), more than a decade after it was released!

There are "disabilities" - functional differences or shortcomings - that aren't physically obvious. Notably with respect to gaming, memory and attention deficits have a significant impact on a person's ability to play AND ENJOY certain games, for instance RTS games. Where a similar turn-based game would provide useful feedback and notifications of game events, pausing the game flow to alert the player of something that needs his attention, RTS games often take a lazy approach and provide almost no event "acks" at all, instead placing all the burden for such event monitoring on the player. Not only is this not realistic in the context of such games, it winds up being especially cruel to those players who have inherent difficulties with such things.

Why is it always assumed that if there's an option that makes a game easier, this somehow "ruins it" because everyone will use it?

Suspension of Disbelief? Or something similar like that. Games need rules. In and of themselves, they don't really have a "purpose".. that purpose is created by making up rules. And everyone participating in the game has to agree to those rules and follow them. If you play with other people, it's them who force you to abide by the rules. If you play alone, for example with a computer game, it's the game that has to force you to abide by the rules.

If you essentially have to make up your own rules and enforce them yourself for yourself, it becomes harder to suspend your disbelief.. it just becomes too obvious that there really isn't a point to what you're doing.

There are "disabilities" - functional differences or shortcomings - that aren't physically obvious. Notably with respect to gaming, memory and attention deficits have a significant impact on a person's ability to play AND ENJOY certain games, for instance RTS games. Where a similar turn-based game would provide useful feedback and notifications of game events, RTS games often take a lazy approach and provide almost no event "acks" at all, instead placing all the burden for such event monitoring on the player. Not only is this not realistic, it winds up being especially cruel to those players who have inherent difficulties with such things.

How about a little game-design love for these "disabled" folks, too?

Not to mention have a functional speed option no matter the difficulty setting.... (glares at blizzard)

Oh cripes. Is *this* what 'gamification' has wrought? "Ification" means 'game-like' now? Please no. Please, let this suffix encrappening be stopped in its tracks, right here. This far, no farther! Aaaauugh *gouges eyeball out with keyboard*

BTW, does anyone else recognize the figure in the graphic images as a real actor? I can't recall his name, and I think I last saw him acting in the Nineties.

/edit: Thanks, Google Image Search! I see now it's Brian Krause acting a part for the game L.A. Noire. It was probably his longstanding role in Charmed that I was recalling, though I'm sure I saw him acting before that.

I remember the big hubbub about the Vita Chambers in BioShock, for example. I used the thing ONCE ... No one was FORCED to use them though, and I'm sure many players that were perhaps not as good at the game (or perhaps even disabled) used them to get through difficult sections...

I also did not use the vita chambers, but they STILL ruined the game for me. Ruined it to the extent that I couldn't be bothered finishing it. The problem was that the game was designed with the vita chambers in mind. Compare the incredible tension of System Shock 2 to the bland run-and-gun feel of Bioshock and you'll see what I mean. System Shock 2 literally gave one of my friends nightmares. Playing that game was STRESSFUL. That kind of impact is just not possible in a game which is designed with the expectation that your actions have no consequences. So yeah, put the accessibility options in there for sure, but please have them turned off by default.

IMHO many games are already TOO accessible by default, in that they try too hard to accommodate the "casual" gamer. Unfortunately that kind of thing sucks all of the drama out of a game. It should always be possible to screw up badly enough that you have to at least restart the level. If that's not possible, then where is my motivation to figure out a better strategy (which to me is half the fun)? The gameplay stops mattering, and suddenly you don't have a game at all, just a sh*tty interactive movie.

An analogy: For medical reasons, I can't eat most "normal" food. I'm not "picky" or some sort of food fetishist -I'm talking about multiple medically diagnosed chronic diseases here (including one of the dreaded "definitely will kill me eventually" type). As a consequence eating out is just impossible. I'd REALLY like some dining OPTIONS so that I could e.g. attend a family member's birthday dinner at a restaurant (just once would be nice!). But I don't think it would be fair to force everyone else to eat the bland semi-edible rubbish that I have to put up with every day. That would just ruin everyone's meal.

Laroquod wrote:

"Includification"...Please, let this suffix encrappening be stopped in its tracks, right here. This far, no farther! Aaaauugh *gouges eyeball out with keyboard*

Really, how much code does it take to make a couple of color reassignment options? This is especially important in games where friend/foe is marked by colors.One of the worst offenders ever was the Falcon flight sim series. I loved those games, but I dreaded ground-support missions. Good guys were green, bad guys were brown. I just cancelled out of those missions, because there was exactly 50% chance that I would end up court-martialed for blowing up my own armor column.

Exactly same problem. I can't see red, which makes many colors impossibile to differentiate. The only way I could play most games well is with an observer next to me to provide more information. I played many games many years with my wife assisting me. Now that we have a kid, I pretty much find it impossible to play most games. This affects everything from super smash brothers (mushrooms different colors? I never knew) to FPS (directions on the wall, uniform colors, aiming reticule, outlines to indicate objects are selectable, etc.). It is really frustrating to have to go ask someone what they see so I know what is supposed to be going on in a game.

A benefit is that I do not see blood in games as red. It is the green blood that is scary in my view of the world (since I can actually see it).

I dunno. I'm not sure it really is an accessibility issue. There are going to be things that some people are inclined to and capable of that others simply cannot be, disability or simple lack of ability notwithstanding.

One of my good friends growing up has CP. He's a fully functional person aside from the fact that he's not always in full control of himself (he's also an avid gamer, incidentally). More than anything else in life he wanted a career in the military. He wasn't able to enlist and serve, obviously, because his condition disqualified him summarily. I have no doubt that had he been afforded the opportunity he would have completed basic training and excelled in whatever position they placed him in, but that's neither here nor there. I had the physical capability to serve and I did. It opened far more doors for me than I had ever even realized existed that my initial desire (to be a combat medic) now seems rather asinine by comparison to what I was afforded an opportunity to participate in during my career.

Anyway said dude is still a pretty avid gamer, and has slowly but surely worked towards his end goal of military service, just recently entering the Palace Acquire intern program after several false starts (it is surprisingly difficult for disabled persons to get into Federal positions, with a big part of that being bureaucratic apathy in learning/figuring out all the extra forms required). If everything goes according to plan he'll outplace somewhere in the DOD. He refuses to take any handicap beyond what our "physically able" friends will take and he is the image of rock solid contribution to nearly any group activity up to and including paintball. I've actually had the opportunity to chill on the couch with him playing the "example" game pictured above. He's not in the business of lying/detecting lying professionally, but he's no country rube and fully capable of determining when someone is lying to him (I've seen him call clerks out on it in person). That said, there was a noticeable difference in his choices and the ones I would have made in his position (and, notably, did when I originally played through the game). Part of it was that I had up close and personal experience with lying/liars in life-and-death situations that he hadn't that colored the way my brain reacted to the programmed facial twitches and vocal nuance.

This in no way caused him to quantify his experience with the game as "worse" than mine. He didn't even seem particularly displeased with his score relative to mine.

If games are going to remain a viable challenge, then there has to be an understanding that some simply will not be accessible for some people. By the same token that it takes a particular sort of murderous, backstabbing, Machiavellian caricature to truly dominate a game of Diplomacy, it's going to take unique character traits to excel at any game. This inevitably means that there will be a point at which your complete lack of those characteristics will preclude you from any form of success in the medium.

Why is it always assumed that if there's an option that makes a game easier, this somehow "ruins it" because everyone will use it?

Suspension of Disbelief? Or something similar like that. Games need rules. In and of themselves, they don't really have a "purpose".. that purpose is created by making up rules. And everyone participating in the game has to agree to those rules and follow them. If you play with other people, it's them who force you to abide by the rules. If you play alone, for example with a computer game, it's the game that has to force you to abide by the rules.

If you essentially have to make up your own rules and enforce them yourself for yourself, it becomes harder to suspend your disbelief.. it just becomes too obvious that there really isn't a point to what you're doing.

Really now. Games have had Easy-Normal-Hard modes since the beginning of games. If you can't control yourself enough to play any game on anything other than the easiest mode available, that's a personal problem.

There is no cogent argument to support that the way someone else plays their game affects you in any way. If you're worried that other people being able to beat games that you struggle through, because they had an easy mode, somehow devalues your achievement, then you need another way valuing your self worth.

I also did not use the vita chambers, but they STILL ruined the game for me. Ruined it to the extent that I couldn't be bothered finishing it. The problem was that the game was designed with the vita chambers in mind. Compare the incredible tension of System Shock 2 to the bland run-and-gun feel of Bioshock and you'll see what I mean. System Shock 2 literally gave one of my friends nightmares. Playing that game was STRESSFUL. That kind of impact is just not possible in a game which is designed with the expectation that your actions have no consequences. So yeah, put the accessibility options in there for sure, but please have them turned off by default.

IMHO many games are already TOO accessible by default, in that they try too hard to accommodate the "casual" gamer. Unfortunately that kind of thing sucks all of the drama out of a game. It should always be possible to screw up badly enough that you have to at least restart the level. If that's not possible, then where is my motivation to figure out a better strategy (which to me is half the fun)? The gameplay stops mattering, and suddenly you don't have a game at all, just a sh*tty interactive movie.

That doesn't have anything to do with accessibility. That's a game design catering to casual gamers. Otherwise known as a casual game. If you don't like casual games, you don't have to, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't exist.

Being a gamer and the parent of a disabled gamer, this whole issue is indicative of the accessibility issue at large. The world is designed for people without disabilities from soda cans to doorways to construction cranes. In this case, the disabled and the families who care for the disabled are The 1%.

Corporations do not cater to our 1%. They cater to the investors and profit margins. Whom ever can use the widgets they sell, buys the widgets they sell. Getting the monster to cater to Our 1% is nearly impossible without regulation. So, Our 1% needs to go guerrilla and come up with our own solutions and industry to provide those solutions.

I have personally modified XBox and PS3 controllers so that they can be operated by a person with very little hand movement. How? I Love my Son so, I figured it out. Now he pwns your gamers in Halo and Call Of Duty:MM3. And nobody knows he's in a wheelchair full time until he shares that information over his headset.

He wanted to play drums in Rock Band. So, being a musician myself, I knew that electronic drums are simply triggers that can be manipulated. And in Rock Band, there is no polyphony or strike sensitivity, there is just on or off. Finger Pads he taps on with all ten of his fingers not only helps him play Rock Band but, play in a real band too.

Directing energy towards the monster is a worthy goal to get it to try and change it's course or concern. And I applaud that effort. But, with people who are disabled, the needs are now. Adaptation is the best course. It's also a blue water concept.

Oh, by the way, he plays Rift too. A modified touch pad and macros work great for MMOs.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.